Phase Change Energy Storage Elastic Fiber: A Simple Route to Personal Thermal Management

A novel thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) PCFs possessing a high loaded ratio and high elasticity was simply prepared by vacuum absorption following wet spinning, then coated by waterborne polyurethane (WPU). Octadecane (OCC), hexadecanol (HEO), and stearic acid (SA), which have different tendencies to form hydrogen bonds with TPU, were selected as PCMs, and their thermal behavior, thermal storge properties, and elasticity were systematically studied, respectively. The hierarchical pore structure though from the sheath to the core part of TPU filaments weakened the influence of the nonfreezing layer and hydrogen bond on the crystallization behavior of PCMs. The resulting HEO/TPU fiber has the highest enthalpy of 208.1 J/g compared with OCC and SA. Moreover, the HEO/TPU fiber has an elongation at break of 354.8% when the phase change enthalpy is as high as 177.8 J/g and the phase change enthalpy is still 174.5 J/g after fifty cycles. After ten tensile recovery cycles, the elastic recovery rate of HEO/TPU fiber was only 71.3%. When the HEO in the fiber was liquid state, the elastic recovery rate of HEO/TPU fiber promoted to 91.6%. This elastic PCFs have excellent thermal cycle stability, elastic recovery, and temperature sensitivity. It has great application potential in the fields of flexible wearable devices, intelligent fabrics, and temperature sensors.

Growth Study of Hierarchical Pore SSZ-13 Molecular Sieves with Improved CO2 Adsorption Performance

SSZ-13, with a unique pore structure and excellent thermal stability, showed a potential application in the adsorption and catalysis industry. In this work, Al(NO3)3 was used as an Al source to study the performance and morphology of the zeolite. The zeolite was prepared with an unconventional process by adding an Al source before the structure-directing agent and base. When inorganic oxygen-containing anions were introduced into the unconventional synthesis system, the crystals of the zeolite conform to the unconventional growth mode. The zeolites with large crystals were assembled from small unit nanocrystals. Extending the reaction time, aging time and adding fluoride ions introduced a multistage pore structure on the surface of the molecular sieve, which improved the CO2 adsorption performance. When aging for 24 h, reaction for 96 h, and the amount of fluorine added was 0.05 (F/Si), the sample had the best hierarchical pore structure. The SSZ-13 molecular sieve with an added amount of 0.1 (F/Si) has the highest CO2 adsorption performance. The adsorption amount was 4.55 mmol/g at 1 bar, which is 20.4% higher than that of zeolite SSZ-13 prepared by the conventional process.